By any memes necessary? Small political acts, incidental exposure and memes during the 2017 UK general election

Following the 2017 UK general election, there was much debate about the so-called ‘youthquake’, or increase in youth turnout (YouGov). Some journalists claimed it was the ‘. . . memes wot won it’. This article seeks to understand the role of memes during political campaigns. Combining meta-data and content analysis, this article aims to answer three questions. First, who creates political memes? Second, what is the level of engagement with political memes and who engages with them? Finally, can any meaningful political information be derived from memes? The findings here suggest that by far the most common producers of memes were citizens suggesting that memes may be a form of citizen-initiated political participation. There was a high level of engagement with memes with almost half a million shares in our sample. However, the level of policy information in memes was low suggesting they are unlikely to increase political knowledge

How social media is changing political representation in the United Kingdom

Since the introduction of social media into everyday communication, a series of claims andcounterclaims have been made about its potential to either rectify or exacerbate the so-calledcrisis within representative democracy. Theoretical arguments suggest that social media mayincrease the closeness between representatives and citizens through more direct andcommunicative forms of representation. Based on these assumptions, this thesis seeks to assessthe ways social media has changed the conduct of political representation in the United Kingdom.It does this through an original methodological approach to answer research questions from theperspective of MPs (interviews), citizens (surveys), and social media data from three socialnetworks. This approach goes past previous literature on the use of social media that does notprovide either multi-platform analysis or encapsulate data from citizens to offer a bottom-upapproach.The results show that in many ways, MPs do not fully utilise Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram totheir expected potential. They seldom seek interpersonal dialogue with citizens, with onlymarginal increases in two-way communication attributable to social media. Instead, MPs arepursuing a strategy of broadcasting, limiting interactions to citizens who display positivesentiment towards the MP or their party: rejecting the notion that social media might foster theconcept of direct representation. Concurrently, the evidence suggests citizens might not beseeking to interact with MPs, as only a limited number of participants pursued communicationwith them. Instead, citizens seem to follow representatives for information gathering, news, orto show support. This implies that the crisis within representative democracy cannot be overcomeby interactive communication platforms alone.However, findings indicate that social media increases feelings of representation by citizens whenthey follow MPs. From this, social media is found not to provide representative benefits inexpected ways, but as a communication platform for a process of informational convergencewhich shapes the way citizens interpret the MPs they follow. This highlights a new way ofapproaching the benefits of representative communication towards a model in which what MPspost is of greater importance than levels of interactivity.Keywords: Political Communication; Political Representation; Social Media; Deliberative Representatio

A tale of three tribes : UK MPs, Twitter and the EU Referendum

This paper examines the structure of Twitter communication networks between MPs during the 2016 EU Referendum campaign. In particular, the research examines the impact of Twitter in two dimensions: (1) how far social media might facilitate inter-party linkages thus eroding traditional partisan relations between MPs? This was given added potential by the supposedly cross-party nature of the Referendum campaign and, therefore, we specifically examined the collective communicative networks that formed around Leave and Remain amongst MPs; (2) Given the potential of social media to provide a platform for individual politicians to personalize campaigns, we asked how far social media might disrupt traditional formal intra-party hierarchies? Did, for example, backbench or relatively unknown figures come to the fore in the EU debate? Our results indicate that whilst there existed a high degree of partisanship, interestingly, Remainer MPs tended to adhere to party networks resulting in a divided remain network. By contrast, the Leave network was more unified but also more porous. Within the networks themselves, the centrality of individual MPs did not always reflect their formal status